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I strongly agree with PJ's comment. Plugins like Flash, Silverlight, and Active-X complicate the process and lower the quality of the web experience. - Users

I strongly agree with PJ's comment. Plugins like Flash, Silverlight, and Active-X complicate the process and lower the quality of the web experience. - Users must install and maintain an additional piece. - Less likely to work in all environments (mobile phone, etc.) - Plugins bypass the authentication mechanisms built into browsers. Maintaining session currency requires sharing information between browser and the plugin - extra work to develop and many Flash/Silverlight/etc. developers just don't bother. - Plugins may provide an additional vector for malware. They may not be harder to secure than native browser stuff but you have to worry about two things. E.g. Flash cross-site scripting attacks. - Requires more than one set of development tools (e.g. Firebug can't see inside Flash or Silverlight objects on a page) - Unnecessary most of the time: E.g., a lot of common Flash animation can be done equally well with native browser techniques like Javascript, CSS... - Future browser technologies will make plugins even less necessary: e.g. Flash was probably the best option when YouTube came out but when HTML 5 starts to take over the video and audio tags may make it superfluous. If your web app requires some plugin you WILL lose at least a small part of your target audience - Silverlight more than Flash. If you don't absolutely have to have the functionality a plugin gives you, why short-change yourself like that?

jdowdell 17y ago
"ratsbane" agrees with "pj", and the world can do nought but comply.... ;-) People do choose to install Adobe Flash into their varied browsers, and they do so successfully and rapidly. It is a real capability in the world today. For every authoritarian iPhone sold, there are forty-odd Flash-enabled phones sold. Not ubiquity yet, but we're getting there. Browser vendors could indeed improve plugin communication for things like prefs-setting, cookie-blocking and so on. Instead Opera, Mozilla, Apple and Google are on a dysfunctional goosechase with VIDEO. <em>"If your web app requires some plugin you WILL lose at least a small part of your target audience."</em> That's true. But it will be more accessible than requiring a browser update, or change in browser brands. Browser plugins let people choose their favorite browser brand, without losing functionality to other brands of browser. It's cross-browser functionality. Plugins enfranchise minority audiences, and makes it easier for minority browser vendors to compete. jd/adobe
- tmoertel 17y ago
  > Instead Opera, Mozilla, Apple and Google are on a dysfunctional goosechase with VIDEO. I'm sure you hope they're chasing wild geese, but from where I'm sitting, almost all Flash usage on the web, weighted by user volume, falls into two categories: that requiring video, and that which web browsers can already do pretty well without plug-ins. Thus once browsers have semi-decent video support, much of the need for Flash on the web will disappear. If you're holding onto a lot of Adobe options, you might want to hope a little harder about that goose-chase thing. As for me, I'm betting on the browsers and genuinely open standards: so far, that duo has slowly crushed everything else. Gotta love those disruptive technologies.
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    The disruption may indeed come, but only when 95% of all users are using an HTML 5 browswer. Happy waiting ;-)
srnm 17y ago
Reading the NYT with the new AIR-based reader is a pleasure. The fluid layout, typography, and especially the no-lag browsing, changes the experience to the point that I find myself starting up the reader every day -- and the NYT was not my source of news before the new reader. There are many technology-oriented and societal reasons to prefer an "open" web. The fact is that the AIR-reader delivers today what is likely to appear in browsers over the next couple of years.
- pj 17y ago
  I think the point is that Adobe Air creates a "closed" web. Standards are open.

jdowdell 17y ago

"ratsbane" agrees with "pj", and the world can do nought but comply.... ;-) People do choose to install Adobe Flash into their varied browsers, and they do so successfully and rapidly. It is a real capability in the world today. For every authoritarian iPhone sold, there are forty-odd Flash-enabled phones sold. Not ubiquity yet, but we're getting there. Browser vendors could indeed improve plugin communication for things like prefs-setting, cookie-blocking and so on. Instead Opera, Mozilla, Apple and Google are on a dysfunctional goosechase with VIDEO. <em>"If your web app requires some plugin you WILL lose at least a small part of your target audience."</em> That's true. But it will be more accessible than requiring a browser update, or change in browser brands. Browser plugins let people choose their favorite browser brand, without losing functionality to other brands of browser. It's cross-browser functionality. Plugins enfranchise minority audiences, and makes it easier for minority browser vendors to compete. jd/adobe

tmoertel 17y ago
> Instead Opera, Mozilla, Apple and Google are on a dysfunctional goosechase with VIDEO. I'm sure you hope they're chasing wild geese, but from where I'm sitting, almost all Flash usage on the web, weighted by user volume, falls into two categories: that requiring video, and that which web browsers can already do pretty well without plug-ins. Thus once browsers have semi-decent video support, much of the need for Flash on the web will disappear. If you're holding onto a lot of Adobe options, you might want to hope a little harder about that goose-chase thing. As for me, I'm betting on the browsers and genuinely open standards: so far, that duo has slowly crushed everything else. Gotta love those disruptive technologies.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  The disruption may indeed come, but only when 95% of all users are using an HTML 5 browswer. Happy waiting ;-)

srnm 17y ago

Reading the NYT with the new AIR-based reader is a pleasure. The fluid layout, typography, and especially the no-lag browsing, changes the experience to the point that I find myself starting up the reader every day -- and the NYT was not my source of news before the new reader. There are many technology-oriented and societal reasons to prefer an "open" web. The fact is that the AIR-reader delivers today what is likely to appear in browsers over the next couple of years.

pj 17y ago
I think the point is that Adobe Air creates a "closed" web. Standards are open.